In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Introduction As an analytical field, the study of so-called AfroBrazilian1 religions—and of Candomblé in particular—has traditionally privileged cultural contents and their specificities in addition to the search for their origins. Continuous allusion to Africa and the unceasing search for Africanisms (begun at the start of the nineteenth century with Nina Rodrigues) have taken on various forms, from the simple, mechanical comparison of cultural traits whose resemblance to African counterparts is presented as proof of “survivals” (Rodrigues, 1935, 1977; Ramos, 1951, 1961) all the way to studies that attempt to present the persistence of cultural traits as part of a functional, alternative African religious system (Herskovits, 1967; Ribeiro, 1952) or even as the expression of truly African thought (Bastide, 1971, 1978; Santos, 1976). It is from this search for Africa that appreciation for the purity of Candombl é emerges. Simultaneously, Nagô tradition2 is elevated to the height of Africanness and presented as a model cult of resistance in which the upholding of African tradition and values enables an alternative form of being, if not at the level of economic and political relations then at least at the ideological level. This is what Roger Bastide’s “principle of scission” proposes—to explain how blacks who became part of capitalist society’s labor force possessed an ideological autonomy guaranteed by religious participation in groups of African origin, guardians of a cultural repertory and thought that allude to Africa (Bastide, 1971). In characterizing Candomblé terreiros—above all the purest ones—as havens of Africanness and resistance, authors who adopt this methodological stance implicitly accept that the presence in Brazil of cultural traits that originated in Africa necessarily indicates black resistance. The authentic transformation of Africanisms into proofs of resistance signals acceptance of the given that the meaning of cultural traits is determined through origin, without considering the fact that, whether real or supposedly of African origin, cultural traits may have different meanings in Brazilian society. Not taking this into due consideration leads to a search for Africa within Brazil, and the Nagô model emerges from this inces- 2 . . . . introduction sant search based on empirical data regarding Bahian terreiros3 in which Nagô persists in its “purest” form, said model having been transformed into an analytical category by scholars who, significantly, privilege the most traditional terreiros as a field of study. In dealing with other terreiros, the “purest” Nagô is always used as a reference . Inasmuch as they depart from the model, Umbanda, Macumba, and Caboclo and Angola Candomblés are considered “degenerate” and “distorted” from this perspective, “less interesting religious survivals”— an assessment that permeates work extending from Nina Rodrigues at the end of the nineteenth century to Roger Bastide in more recent years. What underlies this logic is that the “pure Nagô” model, which truly represents a continuation of African cultural institutions that were transplanted here and preserved thanks to black collective memory, faithfully reproduced their origins and meanings, thus becoming signs of resistance . In compensation, those who blended with other traditions, degenerating from their original purity, became more integrated. Obviously, integration and resistance came to be judged by degrees of “purity” as defined by cultural traits that were found in the terreiros and considered African. Forsaking this methodological position and gathering clues from research by Yvonne Velho, Peter Fry, and Patrícia Birman (Velho, 1975; Fry, 1977a; Birman, 1980), I became interested in trying to understand the meaning of this obstinate search for Africa and, in particular, the glorification of the “purest Nagô” tradition by an entire school of intellectuals. But I am also interested in examining the problem from another perspective —those who identify themselves as being of African (and specifically of Nagô) descent, and who present fidelity to Africa as a distinctive sign of self-identity. My analysis attempts to introduce an aspect that has been somehow ignored in studies of Candomblé, to wit: its organizational dimension within the sociocultural and political context of society at large. As long as the search for Africa was the basic purpose of research on Afro-Brazilian religions, culture was privileged and conceived of as an objective entity, a determinant element in the identification of cults with certain ethnic traditions that, transplanted to Brazil, adapted and perpetuated themselves as best they could in accordance with mechanisms of acculturation. In this type of analysis, culture appears as an autonomous system and the global society in which interethnic contacts and cultural contacts develop is ignored. Even Melville Herskovits—who proposed to study Candomblé as a...

Share